A Reason to an End
by Chaotic Serenity
Summary: When Skyfire makes a near-fatal error in battle, Ironhide reflects on the reason behind the war.


_Author's Notes:_ A story that began formation around the episode "Fire in the Sky" and has been henceforth developing, though it takes place before that. What happens when a certain jet realizes that friendship sometimes does die? Told through the viewpoint of Ironhide. Oh, and yes, this is **supposed** to sound long and rambling.

**Warnings:** Mild violence, some swearing.

**Spoilers:** "Fire in the Sky."

Obligatory Disclaimer: I own no part of Transformers or any of its characters.

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A Reason to an End

  
"There are reasons we met, reasons for the good and the bad times, and more importantly, a reason to an end."   
-**Unknown**   
  
  
  


I knew it was coming. We all should have seen it coming. The lot of us were there the day he was rescued from the ice. We knew they had a history together. One of us should have talked to him about it, laid it out all nice and straight for him so he knew what was coming.

But we didn't. Not even Prime thought about it. It was just the kind of thing you forget over time. We've all been fighting the war for so long, it's hard to believe that there are those among us who didn't even know it existed.

So I guess today's our fault in some ways, though I refuse to take the blame for Skyfire's blunder. Even without being around for the beginning of the war, he should've at least understood the situation after watching the Decepticons attack time and time again...right?

I don't know _how_ he missed the idea that he wasn't on no exploration mission anymore. This is war, plain an' simple. They shoot at us, we shoot back. Now and again, I'd like Prime to take the first shot so we could get around to kicking us some Decepticon skidplate, but that's just not his style.

I s'pose, too, that if we hadn't figured it out before, then the feeling of the day should've at least given us some clue. There was something in the air that afternoon, something that told us the battle was gonna be rough and there would be wounded to tend, perhaps even more than usual. Ratchet had even taken along extra equipment. "Just in case," had been his reply when I asked him about it, but I knew better.

Even Prime was tense. He had his hand wrapped around his rifle so tight, I thought the damn thing would go off any second. He knew, the way he always seemed to know, that something was going to happen.

I think it was the timing that threw us off. Once the battle began, there wasn't much time to reflect on that odd, scared little feeling that had haunted us all morning. When your fighting, there isn't much time to think about anythin' really, other than your own life. I mean, sure, sometimes you start worryin' about your friends and drift off, but you better regain focus right quick else you're gonna be in trouble.

And it's not that you don't care, mind you, it's just that if those Decepticons know how to do anything good, it's fight. One well-aimed shot while you ain't paying attention, and you can kiss your chassis goodbye.

When the fighting begins to die down, and the enemy's on the run, yeah, then you can care. Now you can relax for a moment without feeling that any second some laser's gonna catch you from behind, or that Ravage or someone else isn't going to launch out of nowhere and start tearin' into you.

Well, it had been a good battle for the Autobots, one of those rare, clean victories that we all love yet hardly ever have. The Decepticons were mostly on the run, only a few, loyal stragglers holding their ground while the other retreated. Ratchet was taking care of the few wounded, laughing off his own paranoia as the dust settled around us. The Dinobots were grouped around the fallen bits of Devastator and arguing over who had struck the final blow. I remember Prime jumping down from the ledge above, grasping one injured arm, shaking off Wheeljack and Ratchet when they attempted to take care of him.

And then...it happened.

We **should** have seen it happen. We had won too easily on a day when we had all felt that unnatural twinge of fear. But like the idiots we are, we let ourselves get swept away by the feeling of victory and completely forgot to stay on guard.

Well, we was all sittin' around, listening to Optimus tell us about the more amusing points of the battle, namely the argument between Starscream and Megatron. Nothing new, really, but it always made for good entertainment. Prime had spared us the details, but we all had a good laugh at his story about how the two had been arguin' even as they battled. Something about leadership skills or fighting techniques or other nonsense, but whatever it was, it had definitely given Optimus an advantage while Megatron was distracted.

Damnit, we shoulda seen it coming! Here we all were, just sittin' around all defenseless and the like, not even thinking for a minute that maybe, jus' maybe, we should've been more on guard... 

Starscream must have been mighty angry at Megatron during that battle. And evidently, none of that anger had dissipated by the time he came rolling out of the hills, hurtling through the air at unbelievable speeds and firing rapidly. A couple of us were facing the direction he came from and managed to yell out in warning, but some just didn't see it coming. Most of the damage came in the first wave of shots. By the time Starscream circled around and fired again, the lot of us had realized the battle wasn't quite over and got ourselves moving.

Still, the damage was done. I saw Bumblebee struggling to move from where he had been struck down, arm shorn clear off. There was screaming behind me and a horrible tearing, squealing sound as metal twisted and burned. Optimus was yellin' orders, firing into the wind as Starscream's engines flared in the distance. I remember the scent of mech fluid...

He came down out of the clouds like a beam of sunshine. Skyfire, that is. Came rip-roarin' out of the mountain pass like nothin' else, rainin' and sprayin' fire power everywhere.

He missed the first time around, but on the second fly through, he knocked Starscream hard, throwing the 'Con outta the air and towards one of the canyons. Unfortunately, Skyfire went down with him when 'Screamer caught onto one of his wings and held on like nothing else. We both saw them go crashing into one of the canyons to the left. Prime finally got back on his feet and started yellin' for us to go see if Skyfire was all right while he turned his attention to Ratchet and the wounded. So we rushed over and everything and...

I swear, it wouldn't have been so shocking or terrible had he just done _something_. Then maybe we could've given some excuse for what happened. But here we just saw Skyfire and Starscream at the bottom. Skyfire's engines were smoking pretty badly, but he was still functional. But even as he stood to his feet, Starscream was already gettin' up too, weapons ready.

Well, we started climbing down and everything, and then Skyfire got up, turned around and saw Starscream turned to face him. Their optics met and they raised their weapons and...

Skyfire just...stopped. Just paused mid-battle. Didn't even raise his weapon from where it was by his side. Just let it sit there loosely as he gazed steadily at Starscream like he was looking somewhere far away, sometime long ago.

And that's when it happened. Starscream didn't even hesitate. One blast was fired off. Then another. Then one more. Skyfire stumbled back, his circuits sparking, unable the dodge that final blast from Starscream. The one that tore right through him.

We all just sat there, frozen in shock at what had just occurred as that sick, queasy feeling covered us all, realizing that the bad feeling we'd been unable to shake had just taken form.

Slaggit, he hadn't even lifted a finger in retaliation! 

I remember that snap return to reality as it began to sink in as to what happened. I remember rushing down the cliffside, almost falling as the rock side crumbled under my weight. I remember rushing to Skyfire's side, widening my optics at the damage I already knew had been done, barely noticing as Starscream took off behind us. I remember screaming into my comm link for Ratchet or somebody to get down there quick, that the damage was real bad, worse than anyone could imagine.

I remember the trip to the Ark. Prime and Huffer had double-teamed in order to bring Skyfire back home. We all kept close, keeping an open eye for Decepticons. We were scared now. An attack would mean the end of Skyfire. I don't think any of us have driven so fast since we crashed on Earth. And the whole way we was just prayin', ya know, just prayin' that we would get back before he went offline.

We scrambled madly to get into position once we reached the Ark. The other wounded were taken into Perceptor's lab where Wheeljack and he got to work on them real fast and the like. Skyfire was being wheeled into the medical center by Ratchet, Prime and I right on his tail.

That's all the farther we got, though. Ratchet yelled for us to clear out. Prime started to argue, and then he paused, and I saw it too.

Ratchet's hands were shaking.

We left him alone real quick after that. We all know that look at on Ratchet. When something's scared him so badly and he's not sure whether or not even his expertise can fix things. When someone's life is resting in his hands.

And the pressure there is hard enough, I s'pose, without observers around to judge you, to catch your every mistake. Because when you sit there under the glare of the medical room lights, and you watch your friend, your brother, your worst enemy being repaired and you don't know what the outcome will be, then the room feels a little colder, and the medic's hand starts to shake a little harder, and suddenly it's them lying on that table, waiting for the eternal judgment to descend.

So I like to think that when we leave Ratchet to his own suffering, we're doing him a favor.

But it was right before Ratchet wheeled him into the room that it happened again, that little twist of fate that no one expects. And I reckon that it wouldn't have made such an impression on me because I've seen alot of sufferin' in my time, and it's nothing new to see somebody so injured, but the fact was that out of all of us that was standing 'round, it was _me_ that he chose, that he picked out from among the crowd. It was _my_ optics he looked into.

What I'm talkin' about is right before he entered the room, Skyfire's systems surged, and he came back online for just a few moments. I remember him sitting up abruptly, gaze flickering around wildly before coming to rest on me. Then he just lifted one hand and extended it towards us, towards _me_, and uttered one phrase before collapsing back into stasis.

"It's...the end."

There was another one of them little ripples in time, you know those moments where everything freezes. Just like that horrible moment when he didn't pull the trigger and let Starscream hit 'im. One of those sick, queasy feelings that chills your lubricant.

And then Ratchet was rushing him through the door, and there was the sounds of things exploding and things was sparkin' and the smell of mech fluid as it dripped over his frame and onto the floor, and then everything just stopped.

...We all stood for a long time outside medical bay. Just lookin', just shocked at everything that had come to pass. I think Optimus said something to me before he left, but I wasn't listenin'. Because I was thinking, I was remembering something from long ago. Something that had snapped inside me when Skyfire locked optics with my own.

And I know what he meant when he said it was the end.

I've been fighting this war a long time. Longer than most of 'em know, actually. Why, I was fightin' this war even before Prime was our leader. Before Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were even _created_. I've seen everything there is to see about war. I've seen the upside and the downside and even that which is between. I have seen chaos and peace, trust and betrayal, joy and suffering, and through it all, the only thing I've managed to really gain from any of it is the reason why I know Skyfire didn't fight back.

Before the Great War really went underway, the neutralists liked to claim that the only reason we Autobots was fighting was because we couldn't push our cultural difference aside. But I know better. I don't consider myself a genius of any sort, but I **know** better. I _know_ why we're fighting this war. There's a reason y'know. And it ain't got nothing to do with the fact that we have different beliefs.

I mean, that's part of it. Difference between cultures will always exist and all that political scrap we won't really get into, but anyone can get over that. The reason we're fightin' this war is because we were betrayed, because we were given a reason to end the alliance between our two races.

Because unlike the youngins I see 'round here, I ain't naive. I don't pretend to know things. I just do. I was there the day the Decepticons massacred the citizens at the Moon Base trading posts, where they didn't even have weapons to defend themselves. I was there the day we pulled Bluestreak out of the rubble of his city, his conscious mind trapped in a kind of catatonic state as he looked around bleakly, not really responding to anything. I was there the day my own city was attacked, and I saw my friend's face among the attackers. And I was there today when Starscream fired on the person he used to call friend.

So, no, it isn't just because of cultural differences. This was a betrayal of something deeper, a trust that was broken that had been established the moment our kind first gained sentience. We all worked together to fight the revolution, we built our world together, but in the end, they turned on us anywhere because they were considered "superior."

Look, I'm not going to make any excuses for myself. I'm no good-willed child of Primus. I hate the Decepticons. I loathe each and every last one of them with a passion beyond words. When it comes down to it, if I were in Prime's position half the time, then I wouldn't hesitate to fire off that fatal shot or make the killing blow. Because I know that if let them go, if I let myself be as self-righteous as Prime is, then a week later I'd be seeing exactly what happened today.

Because you can't trust them. They won't let you nor they want you to. I used to have friends who were Decepticons, but not anymore. I abandoned their memories as soon as they abandoned me, as soon as I saw their faces among the ranks who tore down my city. What they had given me was a lie, and I had made sure they paid for it.

So call me a racist. I don't care. I'm this way for a reason. Because there is a reason why we remember the Moonbase, and a reason why Bluestreak trained himself to be an established sharpshooter, a reason there are no more neutralists, and a reason why I hate the Decepticons. A reason why Skyfire uttered those words in the medical bay. Because between the death of our innocence and shattering of souls, there is a reason to an end.

And that's what Skyfire meant when he locked optics with me. He now knows what we all had to learn the hard way. The same way Prime'll learn one day to make that fatal shot when he has the chance. The way **I** learned not to trust a Decepticon. The reason Skyfire now knows why his friendship with Starscream has come to an end. Why it had ended even before they found him in the ice.

So now Skyfire's in the repair bay being worked on by Ratchet. Because he didn't let himself see the reason behind the end of the alliance between Autobot and Decepticon. He couldn't let himself go. But we all have to learn to let go sometimes. That's why I'm glad Starscream didn't hesitate to fire. Maybe it won't be so hard for Skyfire to let go.

I learned to let go a long time ago. Maybe in some way I'll regret it if I live to see the end of this war, but it's what's kept me alive all these years, and I ain't turning back. Once you let go, you can't turn back. It's one of those slaggin' ironies of life. You can't live without the past, but you can't let yourself live in it either.

If ya don't leave the past behind you, then you end up like Skyfire did today, lost in the memories, forgetting the reason you became enemies in the first place.

And there's enough pain in war without tryin' to understand why you're fighting. 

So now I sit outside the medical halls with my arms crossed. I can hear the murmur of voices, the soft, rumbling undertone that's Prime, the scratchy baritone known as Ratchet, and the quiet bass we've come to know as Skyfire. Speaking together, tones low, about the reason for the end.

It took three days for Ratchet to repair him, and we nearly lost him several times, but it's going to take even longer for the wounds ya can't see to heal. And I hope, I pray, that we can help him with those.

I can hear their voices down the hall, and I use them as my guide as my footsteps echo off the wall and into the medical room. I see my leader and my friend looking on quietly, the mediator between events. I see Ratchet, exhausted, the tool by which salvation came. I see Skyfire, the victim, stretched out on the bunk, a little less brighter than yesterday, a little more hollow than before.

I see myself as the silent observer, the voice of iron resolve wrought by the powerful hands of time, and in that moment, I decide that I will be silent no more. And then I place my hand upon his shoulder to show him that while there is a reason to end, there is still reason to live.


End file.
